Odds Improve in Car-SUV Crashes

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Cars are doing a better job of protecting occupants in crashes with sport-utility vehicles and pickup trucks, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a new study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The Institute, the Arlington, Va.-based research firm funded by auto insurers, examined differences in height and weight of vehicles and how that mismatch affects death rates in crashes. It found that while incompatibility is still a problem, it's not as bad as it was a decade ago.

The study looked at deaths in 2000 to 2003 occurring in model year 1999 to 2002 vehicles compared with 1990 to 1993 deaths in 1989-1992 model-year vehicles.

In cars that collided with midweight SUVs, the death rate fell 39% — to 42 deaths per million registered SUVs in 2000 to 2003, compared with 69 deaths per million registered SUVs a decade earlier. The death rate fell even more in collisions involving heavier SUVs — to 49 deaths per million registered SUVs from 86 a decade earlier.

Incompatibility — the idea that people in cars are more at risk in collisions with SUVs and trucks because those vehicles are bigger — has been a focus of recent efforts to make vehicles safer, the story said.

The Institute says basic safety measures explain the improvement over the past decade: better vehicle designs, improved seat-belt use, and half of all registered cars now equipped with driver air bags, compared with 3% in 1990. SUVs have also changed during that time, going from heavier, more aggressive truck platforms to passenger-car underpinnings which inflict less harm in a crash.

However, the safety of the SUVs has changed little, if at all, the WSJ noted. In crashes with cars, the death rates for people in both SUVs and pickup trucks generally improved only slightly in most weight categories over the same time period. The death rates were slightly worse for the lightest and heaviest SUVs. Still, the death rates for SUV occupants is substantially lower than for car occupants when the two vehicles collide, and as the SUVs get heavier, they get safer for their own occupants but deadlier for the cars involved in the crash.

Among the study's findings:
·The death rate for occupants of cars that collided with heavy SUVs fell 43%.
·Death rates are 59% higher for car occupants than SUV occupants in crashes involving the lightest SUVs.
·SUVs account for 20% of newer registered vehicles, up from 7% a decade earlier.
·About 80% of drivers now use seat belts, compared to 50% in 1990.